*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

“[Johnson Asiedu Nketiah], the General Secretary of the NDC has rejected
conflict of interest allegations made against him over the construction of the
Bui Dam project. He is also a member of the Board of the Bui Authority is said
to be a major supplier of blocks used in the construction of the project, a
practice the opposition New Patriotic Party has cited as potential conflict of
interest situation… Fred Oware accused [Nketiah] of selling the blocks at a
higher price which has consequently increased the total cost of the project.
Speaking to Joy News on Wednesday, Johnson Asiedu Nketia admitted selling the
blocks to contractors of the project but vehemently rejected conflict of
interest allegations. (Ghanaweb, February 17, 2011)

Ghanaians with deep amnesia
We shall soon forget this
Nketiah will enjoy his loot
We shall worship him as a lord
We shall give him a state burial
He has our sacred reverence

The hypocritical stomach politician
Mosquito Asiedu Nketiah
Paraded the Castle in the days of JJ
Shouted his voice hoarse at NDC rallies
His scruffy body
His fragile frame
Looks like a BA mosquito
His fluffy tie-and-dye shirt
Looks like he was wearing a parachute
Who patented his threadbare shirt
Whose sweat sent away houseflies
Whose children wore threadbare uniforms
Who debited akpeteshie
Who debited face- the-wall
The poor pseudo-revolutionary

Today Mosquito is a multi-billionaire
Strutting the stage
Inciting mayhem
Criminalizing others
The stomach politician
The agile palm-wine tapper
Now a multi-billionaire
Like JJ Rawlings
Educating all his kids overseas
Who has it all
Mansions, cocoa farms
Palm-oil farms, orange farms
Block-making factory
Bottled-water making factory

Mosquito Asiedu Nketiah
The board member of Bui Dam
The supplier of blocks to Bui Dam
The wretched stomach politician
Adorned like a Korle mosquito
Who mocks his conflict of interest
Who pins his graft into our eyes
Who struts the NDC desert
To defame, demonize others
While hollow chest-thumping
To defame, demonize others
The thief criminalized Kufour
For mismanaging the Bui Dam
General Mosquito

Mosquito Asiedu Nketiah
The thief without fat
He who hides all he steals
The mosquito from birth
The wretched housefly
Unlike fattened JJ Rawlings
Nketiah shows no gratitude
No gratitude for thievery
The fattened rich thief
Shows no fattened folds
Unlike JJ Rawlings
Not in his cheeks, chest
Not in his buttocks
Not in his stomach

The John-son of NDC thievery
The blood-sucking mosquito
He who is not bulging
He who has no gratitude
He who doesn’t bulge his thievery
He who doesn’t show his thievery
The stomach politician
The greedy bastard

NDC’s unlettered scribe
The palm-wine tapper
With bulging eyes
Eyes buried in hollow sockets
The thief with a mosquito frame

The Asiedu Nketiahs
The shallow thieves
The hollow thieves
Our gutter-ed watersheds
Of our traumatic history
Of our wretched existence
Of our painful past
Oh! The gullible masses
Preyed on by political vultures
Flea-ed by political lice
Fed on by political mosquitoes
Oh! Our postcolony
Of blood-sucking mosquitoes
Of elite exceptionalisms
Our fetishization of thievery
Our cheerleading thievery
Our architecture of no tomorrow
Our canonization of mediocrity
Our benumbing bastardies

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in
Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college
in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist
hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com